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I Finally Installed an Ad Blocker

32 points| headalgorithm | 4 years ago |css-irl.info | reply

43 comments

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[+] snarkerson|4 years ago|reply
How anyone used the internet without and adblocker AND script blocker is beyond me.

This is my hardware and I am going to control it.

[+] Beaver117|4 years ago|reply
Curious how do you browse the internet without scripts? I've heard people doing this for over a decade and even then it would render most of the internet unusable.
[+] simonblack|4 years ago|reply
I once had the misfortune while travelling abroad for almost a year to have a monthly data quota of a mere 2 gigabytes. Calculate that out. It's only a miserable 60 megabytes a day.

When some web pages can be 2 or 3 megabytes EACH! due to all the crap (advertisements, mainly), it's easy to see that your whole internet bandwidth capabilities are horribly restricted. And more to the point, you're paying for those companies to restrict your overall usage.

I have always used an adblocker. I have most times also used a site-blocker. I have no apologies for doing so.

My machine, my money, my choices.

[+] sumtechguy|4 years ago|reply
This what mostly got me into adblocking in the first place when Time-Warner started talking about data caps. I started with using a pac file, host file, and then mixed in a local proxy server. Aggressive DNS caching. I was hitting upwords of 60-70% cache hit ratio on the squid proxy server. In addition to the local cache from the browsers. My testing was a set of pages with cold cache took about 2-3 mins to load. After turning everything on it was in the 50-70 second range cold and 20-30 seconds warmed up. I was sold. Faster loading times, less ads, and possible future benefit of data caps coming into play.

These days it is mostly just ublock origin, and noscript. That is because everyone went aggressively towards https, less than 10% hit rate these days on squid. I could MITM the thing. But have not done it yet.

[+] toastal|4 years ago|reply
This is where hosts blocking comes in handy with portable devices. It's a shame this requires root access, mostly because banks and other apps like it's a sin to have admin access on your personal device.
[+] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
I still travel on 3GB/month. I didn't realize it was such a constraint. Hell when I leave the EU I rarely use data at all.

In any case, Google Maps uses half of that data. Spotify uses a lot too. If I use OsmAnd for maps, I'm fine.

Most of my internet usage is casual browsing. When I'm offline I just read books and offline articles.

[+] armchairhacker|4 years ago|reply
Same.

I actually used to have AdBlock Plus even though it’s inferior to uBlock origin. I honestly don’t care if all ads are blocked, and i still don’t care. But the issue was I started getting sites spammed with ads covering content even on AdBlock, as well as many sites adding an overlay which required me to explicitly disable ABP for the site (and ABP would keep forgetting my settings so i had to keep disabling it for the same sites).

[+] NGRhodes|4 years ago|reply
I only care about blocking adverts that ruin the browser experience. Is there any adblocker that allows a user to select rules to allow/deny based on parameters such as load time, CPU usage and bandwidth ?
[+] belter|4 years ago|reply
"It might be unusual for a web developer, but up until recently I’d never had an ad blocker installed..."

This must be the understatement of the century...

[+] loudtieblahblah|4 years ago|reply
I prefer adnaseum

We should punish the world being built upon ads. We need to be aggressors and go on the offense rather than passively blocking them

The drive for increasingly fine tuned ads is what destroyed our privacy at the corporate level. Then this data became ripe for the taking by government.

Ad networks are used to spread malware, suck of bandwidth the advertiser externalizes to you.

If you want people to pay for content - make content worth paying for.

And if we can't have social media bc the cost would be too much to bare without ad revenue? I consider this a problem solving itself. Adios.

[+] missedthecue|4 years ago|reply
Adnauseum clicks are easily filtered out by ad networks
[+] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
As wev developers, we should still use the web without ad blockers sometimes (and on shitty phones and shitty monitors). That's how our users browse the web. When you see how terrible other websites are, you might be tempted to do something different, as a competitive advantage.
[+] zabzonk|4 years ago|reply
> I value rely on revenue from unobtrusive ads. I even have small ads on my own site

Perhaps some hypocrisy here?

[+] mrkramer|4 years ago|reply
You made one of the best decisions of your life.
[+] b0tch7|4 years ago|reply
Ask HN: what does everyone use for ad blocking on mobile?

Fwiw I'm on Android and use Chrome but curious for what people do

[+] yabatopia|4 years ago|reply
Firefox + uBlock Origin. Or any other browser with built-in ad blocking like Brave or Vivaldi, probably the best solution for non-techie friends or relatives.
[+] Beaver117|4 years ago|reply
Any DNS host blocker (there are several) for Chrome ads. Youtube Vanced for youtube ads. Firefox + ublock origin for the rest
[+] fomine3|4 years ago|reply
I has used Chrome and AdGuard on Android that works as a VPN service and MITM TLS. It works but sometimes false positives happens and removing them is a bit annoying. Now I use Samsung browser and Content Blocker, because I found that Samsung browser is better UI than Chrome, and it supports content blocker as a bonus..
[+] 6equj5|4 years ago|reply
Firefox, µBlock Origin, and NoScript: the holy trinity. ;p
[+] wutbrodo|4 years ago|reply
I just switched from Chrome to Brave. The HN hivemind tends to jump all over Brave with criticisms of their "attention token" monetization scheme, but this criticism has never made any sense to me. I just....don't use BAT, and never think about it at all.
[+] merlinscholz|4 years ago|reply
If you are on iOS and Safari, AdGuard (free version) works perfectly fine
[+] aclelland|4 years ago|reply
I use DNS66 and have done for a few years. Works really well with Chrome on Android. If you frequently use a VPN it means you need to remember to switch it back on.
[+] gbuk2013|4 years ago|reply
I use Block Bear on my iPhone - came across it years ago and it seems to work reasonably well.
[+] URfejk|4 years ago|reply
Block this, RethinkDNS, Invizible Pro, Blokada ...
[+] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
Blokada on Android.

I used Nextdns in the past.